News Comment/COMENTARI AL DIA

Jail Without Trial/PRESÓ SENSE JUDICI

Jail Without Trial

by Josep C. Verges

Pallerols Monopoly: Duran 2000: I will resign… 2013: Fuck you all! Below: Of all Duran’s men, only the tsar’s courier from Andorra Pallerols will go to jail.

Pacta sunt servanda states the Rule of Law since the Romans. But the Spanish Law of the Ruler never respects a pact. Once again we see this in avoiding an open trial in the worst corruption affair to come to court –twelve years late- the Pallerols Case with the chief culprits untried and three who followed orders sent to jail. The only sop is that the Christian Democrat party pled guilty to stealing from the unemployed and taxpayers, but why not try the gang leaders of the official party of crooks?

Vicenç Gavalda is an honest man of faith whom I met when he led the Christian Democrats in Sant Cugat in the eighties. A great organizer he filled the Palau Blaugrana for a party rally which left Jordi Pujol astonished and Duran Lleida fearful. Never again have the Christian Democrats filled anything, except their pockets, after the corruption scandal broke of all Duran’s men, and women. Vicenç Gavalda was the source who told me about the corruption of the Christian Democrat leadership. I was at the time criticising in the press the corruption of the socialist organisation secretary in “Sartre in the Can Brians jail”. The Christian Democrat organisation secretary told me: “You haven’t a clue. It’s much worse here with us. I’ll reveal all if you don’t write about it.” I answered that I was no parson to hear confessions in secret. Mr. Sala invested black money and public funds to organize the socialists while the Christian Democrats were left only the crumbs of the what the leadership pocketed. For those pennies he must now go to prison. I published the story without giving names, but the crooked saga was so exact that Duran revealed himself to me as corrupt without my ever having mentioned him! Vicenç Gavalda has always made himself responsible for his actions. When the Christian Democrat corruption scandal broke I advised him to plea bargain with the anti-corruption prosecutor to ensure that the rat’s head -as he calls himself- Duran and Miss Mousy cleaning up with him, his secretary Sanchez Llibre, came to trial. He answered: ”I was also involved, diverting funds to the Christian Democrats and I must pay for my guilt.” So it is not that the innocent go to jail. Pallerols is Duran’s man in Andorra and the Gavalda brothers were the link with the public purse to pay Christian Democrat bills. But where is justice when the real perpetrators get away scot free. They have not been tried. They have not even testified in court on the Pallerols Case. In one of the many trials of Christian Democrat corruption I sat in the public gallery next to Vicenç Gavalda. Sanchez Llibre was being interrogated in the witness stand by the anti-corruption prosecutor about whether he knew any of the twelve accused, all later to be found guilty. For example his brother in law or his go-getter. Vicenç Gavalda turned to me: ”What a disgrace! He has testified that he knows them all, every single one, and he is not going to be tried!” He also found a disgrace the pact between the judge and the prosecutor not to hold an open trial in this latest, the Pallerols Case. He resisted to the end because he wanted to call as witnesses Duran and Sanchez Llibre, the evil twins of the Christian Democrats, to incriminate themselves. He finally gave way and corruption has won. There was no open trial, the main perpetrators have not testified and the corrupt presumed innocent are still in power. Under the Rule of Law no one can be jailed without a public trial, but under the Law of the Ruler in Spain you certainly will.